


what one calls the bear trap

by robinsegg



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Blood, But still wanted to warn, Getting Together, M/M, Not a lot though!! just a little cut on the thumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27014719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robinsegg/pseuds/robinsegg
Summary: “Red’s a good color on you,” he says. A joke, wrapped up in his pointed mouth. He watches out of the corner of his eye as Shouyou digs for a bandage and absent mindedly drags his fingers to his mouth, licking over the blood-stained thumb like a bruise. Kenma does not gasp, but he wants to. When Shouyou turns back to him, there’s a blush on both their cheeks, and Kenma’s clenched his hand so tight that beads of blood have started to bubble up again. What a waste of an act of love.Or: Kenma has a cut on his thumb, and Shouyou is daring.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kozume Kenma
Comments: 5
Kudos: 52





	what one calls the bear trap

**Author's Note:**

> Love kenhina love my knife fight boys they are so weird and so sweet on each other

When Kenma is found by Shouyou, he is well aware of all his flaws and oddities that could, on a very good day, be passed off as quirks. And at first, Kenma sees him as a sort of detective, with a strange hat and dress like the ones in those old films with the bad acting. In response, he doesn’t hide himself. It’s a strange response, maybe, for the sometimes cruel, mostly just self-possessed creature Kenma knew himself to be. But in the way that the wolf bares its teeth to warn its hunter of all that it is, Kenma wanted Shouyou to know all that he was in case it was, as he tended to be, A Little Too Much. Not that Shouyou was a hunter to anyone else. Or maybe not in the way he saw him, sharpening the knife, sharpening his teeth, claws (talons?) out, ready to pounce.

Perhaps this was a Him Issue, as Kuroo had so aptly put on more than one occasion. Following his own (certainly sound) logic, Kenma had bared his teeth and proceeded to shove his head in the gaping maw that was the appetite of Hinata Shouyou. Like now, for example. Shouyou’s head is in his lap, and they’re in his little room on the mountain. Kenma’s got his switch out, though he isn’t playing (instead, he was staring at the straying lines of sunlight slinking their way across the wall, and Kenma felt a strange hope that he might see Shouyou’s hair spackled with light), and Shouyou’s reading one of his mangas, and it’s quiet in a nice way. Their visits are so rare that Shouyou tends to feel the need to pack it with so much Stuff To Do and Experiences and Other Such Exhausting Events that this was a soothing change of pace. 

“Uh, Kenma,” Shouyou says, in the way that implies there will be Events Happening Very Soon, More Likely Than Not Bad. “You’re bleeding.” Oh. Well. That was less bad Events than he’d expected.

He looked down at his hand. A cut had reopened on the side of his thumb, and he remembered it being a shallow thing, but it’d still split right open and sent blood running down. It hadn’t buzzed before, but now the sting of an open wound crawled into him. Funny. Shouyou’s nose was wrinkled, forehead spattered with drops of blood. “Oh,” he said, quietly. “Do you have a bandage?”

And then he wiped away at Shouyou’s forehead with his bleeding thumb. Shouyou laughed. “Sorry,” Kenma says, and Shouyou shakes his head as he gets up.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, eyes bright and red smeared across his forehead. He’s still bleeding. It was probably because he stretched his thumb too far and opened up the cut. Too busy keeping his head down, too busy staring up at the ceiling to notice his body, reaching out, opening up. A malfunction, a small one.

“C’mon,” Shouyou continues. There was no one home, all at work or Natsu at a friend’s house. That’s why they’d stayed home. The chance to hang out without interruption was too good to pass up. So that’s why Kenma doesn’t blush when Shouyou grabs his wrist and walks him to the bathroom, puts his hand under the faucet and washes it out for him.

When he looks up into the mirror, Kenma does not see Kenma. He sees Shouyou and his hungry eyes, Shouyou rubbing a thumb over his forehead, and his own drawn face next to him. It’s funny how he didn’t notice he was smiling until now. “Red’s a good color on you,” he says. A joke, wrapped up in his pointed mouth. He watches out of the corner of his eye as Shouyou digs for a bandage and absent mindedly drags his fingers to his mouth, licking over the blood-stained thumb like a bruise. Kenma does not gasp, but he wants to. When Shouyou turns back to him, there’s a blush on both their cheeks, and Kenma’s clenched his hand so tight that beads of blood have started to bubble up again. What a waste of an act of love.

Jerking, puppeteered, Kenma opens his hand, drags his thumb up near Shouyou’s lips. A dare, he thinks, far in the back of his head. A joke, possibly, at Shouyou’s expense-- silly to be so forgetful you lick at blood. And still, something else seems to be bounding around the front of his mind, a roaring sound knocking all the furniture off the desks. The glasses and the toys and games hover in midair, not yet touching the tile. Shouyou looks at him, wide eyes filled with hunger, always hunger, and something else. Something warmer, maybe. Shouyou, more a phoenix than a crow, just as Kenma was more sphinx than cat.

Lips to wound. The glasses shattered. Warm tongue coaxing him out. The careless choice to make possibility reality, and Kenma watching the open window flutter, and Kenma watching Shouyou open up the door to the dreamscape, as if it was easy. Or maybe they’d entered the dreamscape, Shouyou tugging him along by the thumb he’d so gently closed his teeth around.

Bear trap! Bear trap!

He turned to look in the mirror, stringy hair swishing gently like the patterned curtains in the window. Wide eyes, dilated, as if this was some kind of surprising event and not the inevitable conclusion of their strange relationship. Kenma took stock of them as little porcelain dolls, made huge. The heater in Shouyou’s room continued to whir (so surely the window left open was either a mistake or a bout of laziness), the house was otherwise silent, and Kenma stood with arm outstretched, slumped over as he’d always stood, until he’d gotten that binder back in the third year of middle school but was still habit. Shouyou, of course, stood tall, reaching forward as if Kenma hadn’t come close enough for his tastes, as if the thumb in his mouth wasn’t good enough for him.

Maybe Shouyou would get distracted, or bored, or annoyed with his staring in the mirror, and start pressing down harder and harder, and Kenma would have to rip his thumb back out, like a mouse that’d wandered too far into the crow’s territory.

Or maybe, Kenma thought as he stepped closer, Shouyou was the one indulging the lion with a thorn in its paw.

He twisted his hand slightly, and Shouyou obligingly let him free. But he didn’t take his thumb out. Instead, he found his fingers pressed up against Shouyou’s blush-warm cheek. “Hi,” Kenma said. “Is this okay?” Like it was a stupid question, Shouyou grinned at him. There was a speck of blood on his front tooth. 

Kenma removed his thumb, spit-slick, and replaced it with his mouth.

Oh. This was nice. This was really nice.

“I like- I like you so much,” Kenma said eventually, pulling away.

Shouyou, strangely, frowned at that. His eyes started to dart from place to place. “I’m not gonna say this right, but I’ll make sense by the end, okay?” When Kenma nodded, Shouyou continued. “I like you too. I like you a lot, Kenma. And I wanna kiss you all the time and I think you want to kiss me too, maybe not all the time because you’re not always that good with touch but I’m okay with that I don’t mind I just like hanging out with you and playing volleyball with you but-. I like you a lot, and I want to be your boyfriend but I’m not making it easy on you, I don’t think. Do you know what I mean?

“I just mean that it’s most fun with you when we’re not on the same side. And that’s only fun when it’s hard. I wanna be your boyfriend on the court and off it, but if I’m improving, then you have to too. So I’m not making it easy. You have to be interesting.” Shouyou looked back at him, eyes serious as they always were about volleyball.

Kenma grinned. “You’re not allowed to get boring, either. Or I’ll drop you.” What a frightening concept, he thought. Shouyou getting boring. But it wouldn’t happen. With a twisting grin, Kenma turned the faucet back on and picked up the bandage. It hadn’t stopped bleeding. That was fine, though. It was just blood.


End file.
